


Anatomy and Physiology

by englishable



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-20
Packaged: 2018-06-09 16:53:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6915379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishable/pseuds/englishable
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her body has been fashioned by a life of scarcity, all raw sinew and bones and sharp angles. His body has been fashioned by a life of zealotry, valued less for its appearance than its ability to bear more damage than should be possible without breaking. They do not take much personal enjoyment in these bare facts, but they can appreciate them well enough in one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anatomy and Physiology

**Author's Note:**

> Something mostly free of context and highly self-indulgent that was inspired by a lovely post someone shared right [here](http://evildorito.tumblr.com/post/144582730073/headcanon-kylo-ren-is-not-utterly-shredded-he):
> 
> _headcanon: Kylo Ren is not utterly shredded. He has a crazy-strong core but also has a little sliver of tummy fat he’s ridiculously uncomfortable about. On the flip side, Rey is nothing but muscle and bones and doesn’t like how rough and angular her body feels._
> 
> _They both think the other’s insecurity is silly and unnecessary and try to kiss and sooth them away._
> 
> I couldn’t resist. Carry on.

…

The lines of her body are straight and clean and spare, the uncurling edges to a new spring leaf or the tightly-braided coils in a rope.

There are places where her skin pulls taut against the bones, freckled shoulders and narrow hips and barrel-hoop ribs, and between are the tracery veins. They move along the insides of her arms, across the backs of her rough hands, down through her scarred calves and into her callused feet. If she makes a fist around her saber’s haft, if she points her toes to take a guarded position or turns on her heel to avoid a falling strike, all the tendons and muscles leap into whipcord definition.  

“Oh, please. I bet it feels like hitting yourself on a bunch of sharp corners at once.” Rey keeps her elbows tucked close, the way she often does as he holds her. “Or getting poked with sticks. Am I right?”

Exasperated, Ben swings her up in one hefting motion. Her legs wrap reflexively around him, knees and ankles digging hard against his sides, and then he has her moth-wing shoulderblades pinned neatly to the wall. Her breasts are small and light under her robes, as delicately-cupped as crocus flowers.

“It’s a terrible aggravation, really,” he says, in a droll voice. “You’re fortunate to have found yourself such a willing martyr.”

“Well. I never had to – worry about – about gnaw-jaws, at least. On Jakku.” She wriggles in flushed, bemused pleasure while he mouths at her neck, gathers him closer to her with a pair of sinewy and golden-downy arms. “I probably would’ve made for awful eating.”

Ben considers. There is no space between them, now, between him and this body that is as singular and purposeful as the undefeated heart she still carries inside of it.

(And she still takes her meals with grabbing desperation, still rations everything as though it will not be there tomorrow, still holds herself in something like an embrace whenever she lies down to sleep.)

He teases at the skin of her throat with his teeth.

“Hmmm.” Ben raises this note from the bottom of his chest, sending its sound through those bones near the surface of her skin. “Should we find out for ourselves?”

She laughs, big and loud.

…

The lines of his body are long and heavy and broad, a tree’s roots where they bind to the earth or the stone pillars holding up a bridge.

His skin is so crossed with scars that it looks as though he has been ripped apart and stitched together again, a true and ineradicable testament to a false and departed faith. There is a ready weightiness to his arms, a curved expansiveness to his chest and back that absorbs heavy blows like a shield. Once Rey finds herself wrestling to repair the antigravity solenoids in a speeder bike, craning to get her arms under its engine block – then from the corner of her eye she sees Ben take its steering vanes in both hands, adjust his grip, and tilt up the bike’s front end in a silent heave. He keeps those several hundred pounds of alusteel leveled at shoulder height the whole while she requires to finish, his face as implacable as a draft animal’s. 

The memory drives her insane for a good week afterwards. 

And, Rey must note, there is also a solid, centering width about his middle, a belly that is slightly softer just below the navel. 

“It’s pitiful,” Ben declares with perfect objectivity.  He lies on his side, face turned away, knees drawn up and arms crossed. “I’ve never been able to be rid of it. It was always a matter of favoring function over form.”

Rey rests propped on an elbow beside him, one hand formed into the shape of a death-defying poke, but after a moment she lies flat instead and sneaks her arms around his waist from behind. As usual, his huge warmth seems to fill her embrace completely.

“I happen to prefer function,” Rey says. She places her lips on the deep-furrowed scar she once carved into his shoulder. “It’s more likely you’ll get your money’s worth, that way.”

“Ah, yes. The faultless wisdom of a scavenger – I should warn you, I don’t have much in the way of exchange value.”

Rey wiggles her toes while she thinks. Ben always breathes with his chest and stomach together, in the proper meditative way, even if this enduring body he has used without the slightest care is full of terse ferocity beneath her hands.

(And he still occasionally fails to lift his head when his name is called, still holds onto his remorse with an honoring forbearance even though the grief can get so painful-loud, must still prevent himself from flinching if anyone touches him.)

Then Rey slides away once more, tugs at Ben’s shoulder to roll him over flat on his back, and pillows her head against this stubborn bit of vulnerability he has never quite managed to beat or bleed out of himself. The way he almost bolts upright, she may as well have shot him.

“I guess I’ll have to keep you, then,” she announces, as he stares. “Too bad.”

Ben covers his face with a stoic hand, but behind it she thinks there might be a smile.

…


End file.
